Envy and Altruism in Household Consumption

摘要

The paper regards the theoretical models that incorporate envy and altruism in individual consumption functions. Then, since they are characteristics shown by individuals we explicitly model both concepts in an extended utility function. This allows considering the consumption of individuals has direct impact in welfare levels of families and goes beyond the assumption about income or expense as determinants of individual utility. One of the contributions of this utility function is that, for example, public policy should now focus on encouraging relationships between individuals as pro-wellbeing mechanism and stop considering exclusively relationships among individual and objects.